Restaurant work in 2023
The owner stated early on that only approved overtime was allowed. So Saturday, I informed him that I would be hitting overtime around 1:15. I was proud that I had already worked 37 3/4 hours in 4 days, I felt it showed loyalty. Instead, it seemed to enrage him. He launched into a speech, insulting me in my abilities as a cook, brought up pride and told some story about how the army has to break you down, etc. As I had kept records on my phone, I was unconcerned. However, at some point, I became aware that he was shaving time on other employees. Often times, the owner would not let us leave while he waited for a co-worker to finish up.
The first week, I was assigned mostly prep work – cutting vegetables with a knife. When the dinner rush hit, I sometimes helped making some orders, mostly wings. The owner told me that I was to learn the menu on my own time by reading it online and Googling anything I didn't understand. I can honestly say that the exhaustion I felt from working there left me unable to spend much time at this task. For that I was insulted repeatedly. The level of gaslighting by the owner was enormous. I told him at least twice that I learned by doing better, but this did not satisfy him. Prior to being fired, he told me I had “two more days to learn the menu and that's it!”
Let me explain the gaslighting, with an incident which took about 20 minutes the day before I was fired. Between lunch and dinner, before I was to take my break, I showed the owner the chicken soup on the steamtable, for which the chicken was mostly broken up. He indicated to get rid of it. About 20 minutes later, something was mentioned about the chicken stew. owner asked me what I had done with it. I replied “I showed you that chicken stew a few minutes ago.” He said “No you didn't!” and proceeded to take my mistake (there is both chicken soup and chicken stew on the steamtable) and harangued me for 20 minutes. During this time, he very loudly called me a liar, then also claimed that I was calling him a liar. I repeatedly stated that I never used that word. He continued to insist that by repeating “I did show you the chicken,” I was calling him a liar. At many points, he was standing uncomfortably close and pointing his finger within 2 – 3 inches of my face. This man is 6 inches taller, 120 lbs bigger than me. At the end of this tirade, he insisted that I had embarrassed him in front of his other employees, that I must admit that I called him a liar, and that I must apologize to each and every employee for my actions. I did it, but with full knowledge that I was being gaslighted.
On an earlier occasion, after some verbal abuse, he took me in the walk-in refrigerator and spent more than 5 minutes thumbing through his phone to find pictures of his family. He showed me some pictures with white, black and Hispanic people saying this is so and so, etc. He insisted that he wasn't racist. First of all, I never even mentioned that term. Second of all, it has been my experience that people who go to such lengths are actually trying to cover up their racism. At a later time, I did feel that there was some racism in his approach. A newer employee (of his race) spent a very long time on prep work — much longer than I had in fact for the same tasks. He also made the same typical mistakes, his cuts were too wide etc. He did not receive ANY of the verbal abuse I did for the same mistakes, nor did I hear him being reprimanded for taking too long. Instead, the owner simply showed him what he wanted.
He repeatedly lectured about respect and professionalism, but seldom exhibited it. For instance, last Saturday I was told to empty a pot of porridge for cooling. It was placed into 2 pans on a sheet pan on the cooling rack. Later, when it was time to put things away, under pressure from the owner to get done “on time,” I began to slide out the sheet pan to reach the product. The sheet pan suddenly fell away (the rack was rickety ) spilling one pan ( 4 qts ) entirely, but I was able to grab the second losing only about 1 quart. When I reported this to the owner, he began yelling “that was 100 dollars of porridge –you are going to pay for it!” I ignored this, as I felt that it was not legal and the entire batch could not have cost more that $15 to make. On the day I was fired, an order for porridge came in. When I brought it out, he again claimed that he was going to deduct it from my pay. When I stated that he couldn't charge me the retail price for it, he claimed that he WAS only going to charge $75, but now was going to charge $150. I stated that I could not work under these conditions and began taking off my apron. He began yelling continuously and I stated that I quit that I was going to punch out. He kept yelling at me while I retreived my coat, following me to the front of the line as I retrieved my water bottle. He then told me that I was a liar, that I was not quitting I was fired, that my resume was a lie. He kept yelling, and I asked him if he was preventing me from leaving.